Paul Durham - The Last Reckoning

She stood up straight, water flickering silently at her feet. The stream was called the Rill. It flowed like a silver thread round a mossy glade and looped back into itself, hollowing it out from the rest of the dense forest. The Hollow was dominated by an enormous old oak tree, its thick roots engorged like veins bulging from the ground. A spiral staircase of knotted wood planks snaked around the oak’s massive trunk, leading to a series of landings and ramshackle buildings embraced in its boughs. Rope bridges slumped like clotheslines between the main house and several smaller, overgrown cottages nestled in the tree’s outstretched limbs.

A stocky, horned figure barely taller than Rye hurried forward, a handmade platform of intertwined rowan branches tucked under his arm.

“Miss Riley,” the barrel-shaped man called breathlessly. “Where in the Shale have you been? It’s practically nightfall!” He laid the makeshift bridge across the stream at her feet.

“It’s all right, Mr Nettle,” she said. “I made it back, didn’t I?”

Mr Nettle lifted the bridge as soon as Rye crossed, his ferret-like eyes glancing at the shadows on the other side.

“Without an eyelash to spare,” he replied, sniffing the air.

Mr Nettle’s curled horns were, in fact, part of the fur-lined mountain goat’s skull that he wore on his head like a hat. His cheeks were buried beneath a curly beard the colour of dried pine needles, and the hair on the backs of his hands and knuckles seemed as thick as the scruff on his neck. He wore a rather formal vest and coat that looked to have been quite regal at one time, but his trousers were made of raw, crimped wool that gave him the vague look of a woolly ram from the waist down. Despite his wild appearance, Mr Nettle wasn’t part animal or beast. He was a Feraling – a native forest dweller – the only one Rye had encountered in all of her months Beyond the Shale.

“I found a message from Harmless – at least, I think it was from him,” Rye explained breathlessly. “There was a huntsman who said he saw him too, or someone who sounded like Harmless anyway.”

“Perhaps that’s who I smell,” Mr Nettle said, his wary eyes still on the looming forest.

“I doubt it,” Rye said. Her eyes followed Mr Nettle’s gaze across the Rill. “There’s also a Bog Noblin out there and he stinks worse than most anything on two legs or four.”

Mr Nettle turned to her in alarm. “A Noblin this far from the bogs?” he asked. “Just one?”

“That’s all I saw.”

“Travelling alone …” He furrowed his brow. “Even stranger. You’re quite certain that’s what it was?”

Rye nodded. “Trust me. I’ve seen more than my fair share.”

Mr Nettle pulled a curly lock of beard between his teeth with his tongue and began to chew. “Well, if he’s foolish enough to linger, he may never make it back to whatever dank moor he crawled from. Worse beasts than Bog Noblins prowl these woods …”

“Is my mother back?” Rye interrupted, glancing up at the tree house high above them.

“Yes, she returned not long—”

Rye didn’t wait for Mr Nettle to finish. She raced past him, stomping up the spiral steps so fast she nearly made herself dizzy.

Abby O’Chanter raised her thin, dark eyebrows as she listened to Rye’s story, looking up from her scavenged cook pot as she scraped the night’s meagre meal into wooden bowls. She placed one of them on the round stump of a sawn-off bough that served as their table, in front of Rye’s little sister, Lottie. The youngest O’Chanter had donned Mr Nettle’s skullcap and now looked like she had grown horns from her ears.

“The letter H was fresh, couldn’t have been more than a few days old,” Rye emphasised after completing the tale. “And the way the huntsman described the traveller – it had to be Harmless.”

Rye watched her mother carefully and waited for her reaction. Surely Abby would be as excited as she was. After nearly five months in the forest, the most they had heard of Harmless were vague rumours from wayward travellers. But now he had left them a message. Based on what the huntsman had said, he was not only alive, but nearby – not more than a day or two away.

“And the other men in search of your father?” Abby asked. “Did the huntsman have more to say about them? We haven’t come across anyone in weeks.”

“Just that they weren’t very friendly,” Rye said, recalling his words. “They don’t sound like the type of travellers we’d care to run across.”

Abby fell silent. Mr Nettle watched quietly from his stump next to the sawn-off bough, the only sound the crunch of Lottie’s small jaws. She chewed. And chewed some more. Supper consisted of tough meat and bland, boiled roots. Food of any sort was difficult to come by Beyond the Shale, where small game was elusive and the edible plants bitter.

“Tomorrow we can all set out together to search for Harmless,” Rye added, grabbing her mother’s elbow enthusiastically. “With luck, we’ll find him before anyone else does.”

She noticed a brightening in her mother’s face, but one that was offset by some unknown weight too. Rye could see the bones of Abby’s jaw rising and falling as she plucked a root from the pot and chewed it between her teeth.

“Your discovery is promising,” her mother said softly. “But we can’t go tomorrow.”

“But this is the first sign of Harmless we’ve seen! If we miss him now we might never have another chance.”

Abby seemed to weigh her words carefully before speaking, and her tone was regretful when she finally did.

“I don’t disagree, Riley. But we are running out of time. We’ve heard no news from Drowning in months. Any explorers will be winding up their travels and returning south with the coming of the cold.”

Rye glanced at the gaps in the wooden floorboards. She could see all the way down to the mossy earth below them. The walls of the tree house were built round the boughs of the oak, vines crawling through the seams of its timbers. A draught fluttered the cobwebs in its corners. Their latest shelter was not a place well suited to handle the chill of autumn, never mind the deep freeze that would inevitably follow. It would only take one storm to leave them snowbound for the season.

“We too must return to Drowning before the first flakes of winter,” Abby continued, her voice drifting off for a moment. “With … or without … your father.”

Rye clenched her fists in frustration. They couldn’t give up now! Abby raised her hand in response to Rye’s inevitable protest.

“That’s why I’m going to leave tonight to search for him,” she said.

Rye swallowed back her objection. It was now replaced by another, quieter one. “But the forest – at night …”

Mr Nettle shifted uncomfortably on his stump.

“I’ll wait to leave until after our neighbours have made their evening rounds,” Abby said, casting a glance towards the looming trees outside the shutterless windows. She flashed a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Riley, it’s not the first time I’ve ventured out alone after dark.”

“We should go together,” Rye muttered. “It would be safer.”

“I’ll return before dusk tomorrow,” Abby said. “And I’ll stay on the Wend. If your father is heading south that’s the path he’ll take. But if he’s lingered nearby he may find his way to this Hollow. It’s better that you remain here to meet him.”

Rye frowned, unconvinced.

“Lottie, you’ll be in charge while I’m gone,” Abby said with a playful wink. “Keep an eye on these two until I return.”

Lottie gave Rye and Mr Nettle a watchful glare. “I’ll try,” she said solemnly. “Them’s a lot of work.”